Burchfield Collaborates: Kateřina Šedá Comes to Artpark

Lecture/Discussion

Free with admission.

A social practice reading of one of the most innovative experiments in communal art gatherings and how it transformed a small village.

Join us in the auditorium at the Burchfield Penney for the lecture “Burchfield Collaborates: Kateřina Šedá Comes to Artpark” on August 25, 2023, at 1:00 pm. Conceptual artist Kateřina Šedá will explore the impact of Artpark on the village of Lewiston in this in this social practice reading of one of the most innovative experiments in communal art gatherings. A reception with light refreshments will follow. Burchfield Collaborates is a lecture series telling stories you may have never heard about some of the most amazing cultural organizations in Western New York. 

Kateřina Šedá, an acclaimed artist from the Czech Republic who designs experiences for communities that create and foster connections, was invited by Artpark to research Lewiston in April and November 2022. She started by asking the people of Lewiston – high school students, art teachers, seniors, the mayor, business owners, and history buffs – to describe their village in three words: “historic,” “family/hometown,” “quaint/small/safe/kind.” What were its top qualities and its biggest problems? When asked to name things that had changed in the public space over the last twenty years, the biggest thing was “Artpark,” and the impact it had on their lives, their view of the world, their social connections, and their professions.

Šedá’s process explores relationships between people, places, and issues within a community. She devises collaborative actions (such as games, activities, or competitions) that alter how individuals within the community perceive social constructs; these can range from synchronizing the routines of local people, asking neighbors to draw views from their front doors, or inventing a holiday for a small village to celebrate together. Šedá’s meaningful interventions alter relationships, and perceived understanding of social constructs, and have long-lasting positive effects on a community.

Come learn about Šedá’s work as well as her perspective on Artpark and her ideas for engaging that history through a proposed large group action!

This artist residency is part of a project by Kateřina Šedá, curated by Claire Schneider, President, C.S.1 Curatorial Projects. 

Commissioned by Artpark & Company, Lewiston, NY 2002. 

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

ABOUT THE ARTPARK ARCHIVES

The opportunity to host this lecture at the Burchfield Penney Art Center, the home of the Artpark Archives since 2013, furthers the connection between these two institutions and the understanding of Artpark as a key groundbreaking institution whose influence is both historical and international. As Sandra Q. Firmin, Curator of the 2010 exhibition Artpark: 1974 – 1984 writes of this collection: “The Artpark Archives is an essential resource” as it highlights “the significant changes occurring in the arts, in economics, and in politics in the United States during the 1970s and 80s. Artpark represented a somewhat quixotic ideal to bring all the arts together…The full scope of contemporary scholarship must include institutions like Artpark that were unique in providing vital financial and professional support. Its legacy endures with numerous art organizations across the country committed to funding experimental site-specific and community-based work.”     

ABOUT KATERINA SEDA

Katerina Sedá (b. 1977) is a Czech artist whose work is close to social architecture. She focuses on socially-conceived events, often employing dozens or hundreds of people who have nothing to do with art. The events mostly take place right in villages or city streets. The purpose of experimenting with interpersonal relationships is to bring those involved out of their stereotypes or social isolation. She tries to induce a lasting change in their behavior by means of their own (provoked) activity and a new usage of everyday resources.

For Over and Over (2008), she crossed 100 consecutive fences separating property lines between Brno homes, forcing neighbors to communicate with one another to create a device that would allow Sedá to traverse their borders. While her participatory art projects frequently evolve into intricate installations for exhibitions, the desired product is the successful collaboration and interaction among citizens who are socially distant yet geographically close. 

Sedá studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. She is the author of a number of socially conceived projects that she has realized for the Czech Republic and abroad. She was invited to make individual projects for example by Artpark Buffalo Niagara in USA (2022–2024), Milton Keynes Art Centre in UK (2022–2023), LIAF in Norway (2019), IHME, Helsinki (2016), SF MoMA, San Francisco (2013–2014), Tate Modern, London (2011), and many others. She exhibited at 16th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice (2018), the MMOMA, Moscow (2016), the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale in Japan, the Venice Biennale (2013), Kunstmuseum Luzern (2012), the Mori Museum, Tokyo (2010), the New Museum, New York (2009), Manifesta 7, Bolzano (2008), the 5th Berlin Biennale (2008), the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2008) and Documenta 12, Kassel (2007), among others. 

She received many awards for her work: Architect of the Year 2017 (Czech Republic), Magnesia Litera for journalism (Czech Republic), TAKU Production Prize (Finland), The Most Beautiful Czech Books (Czech Republic), Contemporary Art Society Award (Great Britain), Jindřich Chalupecký Award (Czech Republic), Fluxus Award (Germany), Essl Award (Austria), among others. She has published more than thirty books and publications, mapping her individual projects in detail. She lectures about her work at schools, in cultural centres and galleries, but also in villages and small towns, trying to give an idea about her work to large audiences, and thus prompt them to their own activity.

ABOUT ARTPARK

Artpark is a park and a cultural institution located on the Niagara Gorge, USA. Established in 1974, Artpark is a collaboration between the New York State Parks and the cultural nonprofit institution Artpark & Company.

Artpark is currently programmed and managed by an independent nonprofit Artpark & Co. and is widely regarded as a summer outdoor music venue ranked one of the top 100 Amphitheaters Worldwide by Pollstar. Artpark delivers 150+ events attended by 150,000+  visitors, on 150+ acres of land over 110 days of summer. Ninety of these events are community & family programs delivered to over 50,000+ people at low or no cost. Artpark & Co. programming delivers $13-Mil in estimated annual economic impact on the community.

Artpark Archival Collection: The Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State University is pleased to announce the completion of the 403-page finding aid for the Artpark Archival Collection donated by the Earl W. Brydges Artpark State Park in 2013. This extensive archive of over 118 linear feet of textual, photographic, and audio-visual material documents one of the most impactful publicly-funded arts initiatives of the late 20th century. 

From 1974 - 1991, Artpark provided unprecedented opportunities for the creation of avant-garde environmental land art, equitable access to internationally renowned theater and musical performances, and hands-on art classes on everything from ceramics to quilting. In addition to the 2013 donation from the Earl W. Brydges Artpark State Park, the Burchfield Penney Art Center also holds the archives of former Artpark administrators David Midland and David Katzive. 

ABOUT CLAIRE SCHNEIDER

Claire Schneider is President of C.S.1 Curatorial Projects. Dedicated to building community through site-responsive projects, C.S.1 commissions and produces new work in unexpected spaces, often helping artists expand their practices and reach new audiences. With a focus on experiential knowledge, C.S.1’s projects have highlighted bartering, food, gardens, drawing, healing modalities, interactive play spaces, and creating cross-neighborhood conversations using dance, literature and dialogue. 

Her American Association of Museum Curators awarding-winning exhibition More Love: Art, Politics, and Sharing since the 1990s at the Ackland Art Museum, UNC Chapel Hill was accompanied by a 240-page catalogue.  With renowned positive psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, she co-authored a scholarly chapter for The Oxford Handbook of the Positive Humanities, 2022, on the psychological mechanisms through which social practice art can raise community-level positivity resonance. 

Schneider was Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, where she co-curated Extreme Abstraction, 2005, the museum’s largest exhibition to date and directed the regional biennial - Beyond/In Western New York 2007 - with 11 collaborating institutions. As Senior Curator at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, she founded the series Architecture + Art in 2010, which invites architects to create immersive artistic installations in response to the museum and the specific environmental context.

She has also held positions at the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland; Mass MoCA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University; and Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. A native of Nashville, TN, Schneider received her BA from Tufts University and an MA from Williams College, both in art history.